England itself has no devolved government. The 1990s witnessed a rise in English self-awareness.[24] This is linked to the expressions of national self-awareness of the other British nations of Wales, Scotland and, to some extent, Northern Ireland which take their most solid form in the new devolved political arrangements within the United Kingdom– and the waning of a shared British national identity with the growing distance between the end of the British Empire and the present.[25][26][27]
Many recent immigrants to England have assumed a solely British identity, while others have developed dual or mixed identities.[28][29][30][31][32] Use of the word "English" to describe Britons from ethnic minorities in England is complicated by most non-white people in England identifying as British rather than English. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the Office for National Statistics compared the ethnic identities of British people with their perceived national identity. They found that while 58% of white people in England described their nationality as "English", non-white people were more likely to describe themselves as "British".[33]
Relationship to Britishness
It is unclear how many British people consider themselves English. The words "English" and "British" are often incorrectly used interchangeably, especially outside the UK. In his study of English identity, Krishan Kumar describes a common slip of the tongue in which people say "English, I mean British". He notes that this slip is normally made only by the English themselves and by foreigners: "Non-English members of the United Kingdom rarely say 'British' when they mean 'English'". Kumar suggests that although this blurring is a sign of England's dominant position with the UK, it is also "problematic for the English [...] when it comes to conceiving of their national identity. It tells of the difficulty that most English people have of distinguishing themselves, in a collective way, from the other inhabitants of the British Isles".[34]
When the Oxford History of England was launched a generation ago, "England" was still an all-embracing word. It meant indiscriminately England and Wales; Great Britain; the United Kingdom; and even the British Empire. Foreigners used it as the name of a Great Power and indeed continue to do so. Bonar Law, by origin a Scotch Canadian, was not ashamed to describe himself as "Prime Minister of England" [...] Now terms have become more rigorous. The use of "England" except for a geographic area brings protests, especially from the Scotch.[35]
However, although Taylor believed this blurring effect was dying out, in his book The Isles: A History (1999), Norman Davies lists numerous examples in history books of "British" still being used to mean "English" and vice versa.[36]
In December 2010, Matthew Parris in The Spectator, analysing the use of "English" over "British", argued that English identity, rather than growing, had existed all along but has recently been unmasked from behind a veneer of Britishness.[37]
Recent genetic studies have suggested that Britain's Neolithic population was largely replaced by a population from North Continental Europe characterised by the Bell Beaker culture around 2400 BC, associated with the Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.[citation needed] This population lacked genetic affinity to some other Bell Beaker populations, such as the Iberian Bell Beakers, but appeared to be an offshoot of the Corded Ware single grave people, as developed in Western Europe.[41][42] It is currently unknown whether these Beaker peoples went on to develop Celtic languages in the British Isles, or whether later Celtic migrations introduced Celtic languages to Britain.[43]
The close genetic affinity of these Beaker people to Continental North Europeans means that British and Irish populations cluster genetically very closely with other Northwest European populations, regardless of how much Anglo-Saxon and Viking ancestry was introduced during the 1st millennium.[clarification needed][44][41]
The influence of later invasions and migrations on the English population has been debated, as studies that sampled only modern DNA have produced uncertain results and have thus been subject to a large variety of interpretations.[45][46][47] More recently, however, ancient DNA has been used to provide a clearer picture of the genetic effects of these movements of people.
One 2016 study, using Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon era DNA found at grave sites in Cambridgeshire, calculated that ten modern day eastern English samples had 38% Anglo-Saxon ancestry on average, while ten Welsh and Scottish samples each had 30% Anglo-Saxon ancestry, with a large statistical spread in all cases. However, the authors noted that the similarity observed between the various sample groups was likely to be due to more recent internal migration.[48]
Another 2016 study conducted using evidence from burials found in northern England, found that a significant genetic difference was present in bodies from the Iron Age and the Roman period on the one hand, and the Anglo-Saxon period on the other. Samples from modern-day Wales were found to be similar to those from the Iron Age and Roman burials, while samples from much of modern England, East Anglia in particular, were closer to the Anglo-Saxon-era burial. This was found to demonstrate a "profound impact" from the Anglo-Saxon migrations on the modern English gene pool, though no specific percentages were given in the study.[11]
A third study combined the ancient data from both of the preceding studies and compared it to a large number of modern samples from across Britain and Ireland. This study found that modern southern, central and eastern English populations were of "a predominantly Anglo-Saxon-like ancestry" while those from northern and southwestern England had a greater degree of indigenous origin.[49]
A major 2020 study, which used DNA from Viking-era burials in various regions across Europe, found that modern English samples showed nearly equal contributions from a native British "North Atlantic" population and a Danish-like population. While much of the latter signature was attributed to the earlier settlement of the Anglo-Saxons, it was calculated that up to 6% of it could have come from Danish Vikings, with a further 4% contribution from a Norwegian-like source representing the Norwegian Vikings. The study also found an average 18% admixture from a source further south in Europe, which was interpreted as reflecting the legacy of French migration under the Normans.[50]
A landmark 2022 study titled "The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool", found the English to be of plurality Anglo-Saxon-like ancestry, with heavy native Celtic Briton, and newly confirmed medieval French admixture. Significant regional variation was also observed.[51]
History of English people
"History of the English" redirects here. Not to be confused with History of English.
The first people to be called "English" were the Anglo-Saxons, a group of closely related Germanic tribes that began migrating to eastern and southern Britain, from southern Denmark and northern Germany, in the 5th century AD, after the Romans had withdrawn from Britain. The Anglo-Saxons gave their name to England ("Engla land", meaning "Land of the Angles") and to the English.
The Anglo-Saxons arrived in a land that was already populated by people commonly referred to as the "Romano-British"—the descendants of the native Brittonic-speaking population that lived in the area of Britain under Roman rule during the 1st–5th centuries AD. The multi-ethnic nature of the Roman Empire meant that small numbers of other peoples may have also been present in England before the Anglo-Saxons arrived. There is archaeological evidence, for example, of an early North African presence in a Roman garrison at Aballava, now Burgh-by-Sands, in Cumbria: a 4th-century inscription says that the Roman military unit "Numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum" ("unit of Aurelian Moors") from Mauretania (Morocco) was stationed there.[52] Although the Roman Empire incorporated peoples from far and wide, genetic studies suggest the Romans did not significantly mix into the British population.[53]
Southern Britain in AD 600 after the Anglo-Saxon settlement, showing England's division into multiple petty kingdoms
The exact nature of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons and their relationship with the Romano-British is a matter of debate. The traditional view is that a mass invasion by various Anglo-Saxon tribes largely displaced the indigenous British population in southern and eastern Britain (modern-day England with the exception of Cornwall). This is supported by the writings of Gildas, who gives the only contemporary historical account of the period, and describes the slaughter and starvation of native Britons by invading tribes (aduentus Saxonum).[54] Furthermore, the English language contains no more than a handful of words borrowed from Brittonic sources.[55]
This view was later re-evaluated by some archaeologists and historians, with a more small-scale migration being posited, possibly based around an elite of male warriors that took over the rule of the country and gradually acculturated the people living there.[56][57][58] Within this theory, two processes leading to Anglo-Saxonisation have been proposed. One is similar to culture changes observed in Russia, North Africa and parts of the Islamic world, where a politically and socially powerful minority culture becomes, over a rather short period, adopted by a settled majority. This process is usually termed "elite dominance".[59] The second process is explained through incentives, such as the Wergild outlined in the law code of Ine of Wessex which produced an incentive to become Anglo-Saxon or at least English speaking.[60] Historian Malcolm Todd writes, "It is much more likely that a large proportion of the British population remained in place and was progressively dominated by a Germanic aristocracy, in some cases marrying into it and leaving Celtic names in the, admittedly very dubious, early lists of Anglo-Saxon dynasties. But how we identify the surviving Britons in areas of predominantly Anglo-Saxon settlement, either archaeologically or linguistically, is still one of the deepest problems of early English history."[61]
An emerging view is that the degree of population replacement by the Anglo-Saxons, and thus the degree of survival of the Romano-Britons, varied across England, and that as such the overall settlement of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons cannot be described by any one process in particular. Large-scale migration and population shift seems to be most applicable in the cases of eastern regions such as East Anglia and Lincolnshire,[62][63][64][65][66] while in parts of Northumbria, much of the native population likely remained in place as the incomers took over as elites.[67][68] In a study of place names in northeastern England and southern Scotland, Bethany Fox found that the migrants settled in large numbers in river valleys, such as those of the Tyne and the Tweed, with the Britons moving to the less fertile hill country and becoming acculturated over a longer period. Fox describes the process by which English came to dominate this region as "a synthesis of mass-migration and elite-takeover models."[69]
Æthelred II (c.966– 23 April 1016), known as 'the Unready', was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death.
From about 800 AD, waves of Danish Viking assaults on the coastlines of the British Isles were gradually followed by a succession of Danish settlers in England. At first, the Vikings were very much considered a separate people from the English. This separation was enshrined when Alfred the Great signed the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum to establish the Danelaw, a division of England between English and Danish rule, with the Danes occupying northern and eastern England.[70]
However, Alfred's successors subsequently won military victories against the Danes, incorporating much of the Danelaw into the nascent kingdom of England. Danish invasions continued into the 11th century, and there were both English and Danish kings in the period following the unification of England (for example, Æthelred II[a] (978–1013 and 1014–1016) was English but Cnut (1016–1035) was Danish).
Gradually, the Danes in England came to be seen as 'English'. They had a noticeable impact on the English language: many English words, such as anger, ball, egg, got, knife, take, and they, are of Old Norse origin,[71] and place names that end in -thwaite and -by are Scandinavian in origin.[72]
The English population was not politically unified until the 10th century. Before then, there were a number of petty kingdoms which gradually coalesced into a heptarchy of seven states, the most powerful of which were Mercia and Wessex. The English nation state began to form when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms united against Danish Viking invasions, which began around 800 AD. Over the following century and a half England was for the most part a politically unified entity, and remained permanently so after 954.
The nation of England was formed in 12 July 927 by Æthelstan of Wessex after the Treaty of Eamont Bridge,[73][74][75] as Wessex grew from a relatively small kingdom in the South West to become the founder of the Kingdom of the English, incorporating all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the Danelaw.[76]
The Norman conquest of England during 1066 brought Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England to an end, as the new French-speakingNorman elite almost universally replaced the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders. After the conquest, "English" normally included all natives of England, whether they were of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian or Celtic ancestry, to distinguish them from the Norman invaders, who were regarded as "Norman" even if born in England, for a generation or two after the Conquest.[77] The Norman dynasty ruled England for 87 years until the death of King Stephen in 1154, when the succession passed to Henry II, House of Plantagenet (based in France), and England became part of the Angevin Empire until its collapse in 1214.
Anglo-Norman and Latin continued to be the two languages used officially by the Plantagenet kings until Edward I came to the throne, when Middle English became used in official documents, but alongside Anglo-Norman and Latin.[78][79] Over time the English language became more important even in the court, and the Normans were gradually assimilated, until, by the 14th century, both rulers and subjects regarded themselves as English and spoke the English language.[80]
Despite the assimilation of the Normans, the distinction between 'English' and 'French' people survived in some official documents long after it had fallen out of common use, in particular in the legal process Presentment of Englishry (a rule by which a hundred had to prove an unidentified murdered body found on their soil to be that of an Englishman, rather than a Norman, if they wanted to avoid a fine). This law was abolished in 1340.[81]
Since the 18th century, England has been one part of a wider political entity covering all or part of the British Isles, which today is called the United Kingdom. Wales was annexed by England by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542, which incorporated Wales into the English state.[82] A new British identity was subsequently developed when James VI of Scotland became James I of England as well, and expressed the desire to be known as the monarch of Britain.[83]
In 1707, England formed a union with Scotland by passing an Act of Union in March 1707 that ratified the Treaty of Union. The Parliament of Scotland had previously passed its own Act of Union, so the Kingdom of Great Britain was born on 1 May 1707. In 1801, another Act of Union formed a union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, about two-thirds of the Irish population (those who lived in 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland), left the United Kingdom to form the Irish Free State. The remainder became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, although this name was not introduced until 1927, after some years in which the term "United Kingdom" had been little used.[citation needed]
Throughout the history of the UK, the English have been dominant in population and in political weight. As a consequence, notions of 'Englishness' and 'Britishness' are often very similar. At the same time, after the Union of 1707, the English, along with the other peoples of the British Isles, have been encouraged to think of themselves as British rather than to identify themselves with the constituent nations.[84]
England has been the destination of varied numbers of migrants at different periods from the 17th century onwards. While some members of these groups seek to practise a form of pluralism, attempting to maintain a separate ethnic identity, others have assimilated and intermarried with the English. Since Oliver Cromwell's resettlement of the Jews in 1656, there have been waves of Jewish immigration from Russia in the 19th century and from Germany in the 20th.[85]
After the French king Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685 in the Edict of Fontainebleau, an estimated 50,000 Protestant Huguenots fled to England.[86] Due to sustained and sometimes mass emigration of the Irish, current estimates indicate that around 6 million people in the UK have at least one grandparent born in the Republic of Ireland.[87]
There has been a small black presence in England since the 16th century due to the slave trade,[88] and a small Indian presence since at least the 17th century because of the East India Company[89] and British Raj.[88]Black and Asian populations have only grown throughout the UK generally, as immigration from the British Empire and the subsequent Commonwealth of Nations was encouraged due to labour shortages during post World War II rebuilding.[90] However, these groups are often still considered to be ethnic minorities and research has shown that black and Asian people in the UK are more likely to identify as British rather than with one of the state's four constituent nations, including England.[91]
A nationally representative survey published in June 2021 found that a majority of respondents thought that being English was not dependent on race. 77% of white respondents in England agreed that "Being English is open to people of different ethnic backgrounds who identify as English", whereas 14% were of the view that "Only people who are white count as truly English". Amongst ethnic minority respondents, the equivalent figures were 68% and 19%.[92] Research has found that the proportion of people who consider being white to be a necessary component of Englishness has declined over time.[93]
Current national and political identity
The 1990s witnessed a resurgence of English national identity.[94] Survey data shows a rise in the number of people in England describing their national identity as English and a fall in the number describing themselves as British.[95] Today, black and minority ethnic people of England still generally identify as British rather than English to a greater extent than their white counterparts;[96] however, groups such as the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) suggest the emergence of a broader civic and multi-ethnic English nationhood.[97] Scholars and journalists have noted a rise in English self-consciousness, with increased use of the English flag, particularly at football matches where the Union flag was previously more commonly flown by fans.[98][99]
This perceived rise in English self-consciousness has generally been attributed to the devolution in the late 1990s of some powers to the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales.[94] In policy areas for which the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have responsibility, the UK Parliament votes on laws that consequently only apply to England. Because the Westminster Parliament is composed of MPs from throughout the United Kingdom, this has given rise to the "West Lothian question", a reference to the situation in which MPs representing constituencies outside England can vote on matters affecting only England, but MPs cannot vote on the same matters in relation to the other parts of the UK.[100] Consequently, groups such as the CEP have called for the creation of a devolved English Parliament, claiming that there is now a discriminatory democratic deficit against the English. The establishment of an English parliament has also been backed by a number of Scottish and Welsh nationalists.[101][102] Writer Paul Johnson has suggested that like most dominant groups, the English have only demonstrated interest in their ethnic self-definition when they were feeling oppressed.[103]
John Curtice argues that "In the early years of devolution...there was little sign" of an English backlash against devolution for Scotland and Wales, but that more recently survey data shows tentative signs of "a form of English nationalism...beginning to emerge among the general public".[104] Michael Kenny, Richard English and Richard Hayton, meanwhile, argue that the resurgence in English nationalism predates devolution, being observable in the early 1990s, but that this resurgence does not necessarily have negative implications for the perception of the UK as a political union.[105] Others question whether devolution has led to a rise in English national identity at all, arguing that survey data fails to portray the complex nature of national identities, with many people considering themselves both English and British.[106] A 2017 survey by YouGov found that 38% of English voters considered themselves both English and British, alongside 19% who felt English but not British.[107]
Recent surveys of public opinion on the establishment of an English parliament have given widely varying conclusions. In the first five years of devolution for Scotland and Wales, support in England for the establishment of an English parliament was low at between 16 and 19%, according to successive British Social Attitudes Surveys.[108] A report, also based on the British Social Attitudes Survey, published in December 2010 suggests that only 29% of people in England support the establishment of an English parliament, though this figure had risen from 17% in 2007.[109]
One 2007 poll carried out for BBCNewsnight, however, found that 61 per cent would support such a parliament being established.[110] Krishan Kumar notes that support for measures to ensure that only English MPs can vote on legislation that applies only to England is generally higher than that for the establishment of an English parliament, although support for both varies depending on the timing of the opinion poll and the wording of the question.[111] Electoral support for English nationalist parties is also low, even though there is public support for many of the policies they espouse.[112] The English Democrats gained just 64,826 votes in the 2010 UK general election, accounting for 0.3 per cent of all votes cast in England.[113] Kumar argued in 2010 that "despite devolution and occasional bursts of English nationalism – more an expression of exasperation with the Scots or Northern Irish – the English remain on the whole satisfied with current constitutional arrangements".[114]
From the earliest times, English people have left England to settle in other parts of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is impossible to identify their numbers, as British censuses have historically not invited respondents to identify themselves as English.[121][failed verification] However, the census does record place of birth, revealing that 8.1% of Scotland's population,[122] 3.7% of the population of Northern Ireland[123] and 20% of the Welsh population were born in England.[124] Similarly, the census of the Republic of Ireland does not collect information on ethnicity, but it does record that there are over 200,000 people living in Ireland who were born in England and Wales.[125]
English ethnic descent and emigrant communities are found primarily in the Western world, and settled in significant numbers in some areas. Substantial populations descended from English colonists and immigrants exist in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.[citation needed]
In the 2020 United States census, English Americans were the largest group in the United States with 46.5 million Americans self-identifying as having some English origins (many combined with another heritage) representing (19.8%) of the White American population. This includes 25.5 million (12.5%) who were "English alone" - one origin.[127] However, demographers regard this as an undercount, as the index of inconsistency[clarification needed] is high, and many, if not most, people from English stock have a tendency (since the introduction of a new 'American' category and ignoring the ancestry question in the 2000 census) to identify as simply Americans[128][129][130][131] or if of mixed European ancestry, identify with a more recent and differentiated ethnic group.[132]
Prior to this, in the 2000 census, 24,509,692 Americans described their ancestry as wholly or partly English. In addition, 1,035,133 recorded British ancestry.[133] This was a numerical decrease from the census in 1990 where 32,651,788 people or 13.1% of the population self-identified with English ancestry.[134]
Americans of English heritage are often seen, and identify, as simply "American" due to the many historic cultural ties between England and the U.S. and their influence on the country's population. Relative to ethnic groups of other European origins, this may be due to the early establishment of English settlements; as well as to non-English groups having emigrated in order to establish significant communities.[136]
In the Canada 2016 Census, 'English' was the most common ethnic origin (ethnic origin refers to the ethnic or cultural group(s) to which the respondent's ancestors belong[137]) recorded by respondents; 6,320,085 people or 18.3% of the population self-identified themselves as wholly or partly English.[117][118] On the other hand, people identifying as Canadian but not English may have previously identified as English before the option of identifying as Canadian was available.[138]
From the beginning of the colonial era until the mid-20th century, the vast majority of settlers to Australia were from the British Isles, with the English being the dominant group. Among the leading ancestries, increases in Australian, Irish and German ancestries and decreases in English, Scottish and Welsh ancestries appear to reflect such shifts in perception or reporting. These reporting shifts at least partly resulted from changes in the design of the census question, in particular the introduction of a tick box format in 2001.[139] English Australians have more often come from the south than the north of England.[140]
Australians of English descent, are both the single largest ethnic group in Australia and the largest 'ancestry' identity in the Australian census.[141] In the 2016 census, 7.8 million or 36.1% of the population identified as "English" or a combination including English, a numerical increase from 7.2 million over the 2011 census figure. The census also documented 907,572 residents or 3.9% of Australia as being born in England, and are the largest overseas-born population.[142]
English ancestry is the largest single ancestry New Zealanders share. Several million New Zealanders are estimated to have some English ancestry[143] From 1840, the English comprised the largest single group among New Zealand's overseas-born, consistently being over 50 percent of the total population.[144] Despite this, after the early 1850s, the English-born slowly fell from being a majority of the colonial population. In the 1851 census, 50.5% of the total population were born in England, this proportion fell to 36.5% (1861) and 24.3% by 1881.[144]New Zealand's foundational culture was English, given the strong representation in the mid and late-nineteenth century with the English being the largest in migration inflows.[145]
In the 2013 census, there were 215,589 English-born representing 21.5% of all overseas-born residents or 5 percent of the total population and the most-common birthplace outside New Zealand.[146] In the recent 2018 census, 210,915 were born in England or 4.49% of the total population, a slight decrease from 2013.[5]
William Henry Hudson was an Argentine author, naturalist, and ornithologist of English origin.
English settlers arrived in Buenos Aires in 1806 (then a Spanish colony) in small numbers, mostly as businessmen, when Argentina was an emerging nation and the settlers were welcomed for the stability they brought to commercial life. As the 19th century progressed, more English families arrived, and many bought land to develop the potential of the Argentine pampas for the large-scale growing of crops. The English founded banks, developed the export trade in crops and animal products and imported the luxuries that the growing Argentine middle classes sought.[147]
Since the Port of Valparaíso opened its coasts to free trade in 1811, the English began to congregate in Valparaíso. The English eventually numbered more than 32,000 during the port of Valparaíso's boom period during the saltpeter bonanza at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.[citation needed]
The culture of England is sometimes difficult to separate clearly from the culture of the United Kingdom,[148] so influential has English culture been on the cultures of the British Isles and, on the other hand, given the extent to which other cultures have influenced life in England.
The established religion of the realm is the Church of England, whose titular head is Charles III although the worldwide Anglican Communion is overseen by the General Synod of its bishops under the authority of Parliament. 26 of the church's 42 bishops are Lords Spiritual, representing the church in the House of Lords. In 2010, the Church of England counted 25million baptised members out of the 41million Christians in Great Britain's population of about 60million;[149][150] around the same time, it also claimed to baptise one in eight newborn children.[151] Generally, anyone in England may marry or be buried at their local parish church, whether or not they have been baptised in the church.[152] Actual attendance has declined steadily since 1890,[153] with around one million, or 10% of the baptised population attending Sunday services on a regular basis (defined as once a month or more) and three million -roughly 15%- joining Christmas Eve and Christmas services.[154][155]
Religious observance of St George's Day (23 April) changes when it is too close to Easter. According to the Church of England's calendar, when St George's Day falls between Palm Sunday and the Second Sunday of Easter inclusive, it is moved to the Monday after the Second Sunday of Easter.[157]
Map showing phonological variation within England of the vowel in bath, grass, and dance:
'a' [ä]
'aa' [æː]
'ah' [ɑː]
anomalies
English people traditionally speak the English language, a member of the West Germaniclanguage family. The modern English language evolved from Middle English (the form of language in use by the English people from the 12th to the 15th century); Middle English was influenced lexically by Norman-French, Old French and Latin. In the Middle English period Latin was the language of administration and the nobility spoke Norman French. Middle English was itself derived from the Old English of the Anglo-Saxon period; in the Northern and Eastern parts of England the language of Danish settlers had influenced the language, a fact still evident in Northern English dialects.[citation needed]
There were once many different dialects of modern English in England, which were recorded in projects such as the English Dialect Dictionary (late 19th century) and the Survey of English Dialects (mid 20th century), but there has been widespread dialect levelling in recent time as a result of education, the media and socio-economic pressures.[158]
Cornish, a Celtic language, is one of three existing Brittonic languages; its usage has been revived in Cornwall. Historically, another Brittonic Celtic language, Cumbric, was spoken in Cumbria in North West England, but it died out in the 11th century although traces of it can still be found in the Cumbrian dialect. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London and the Great Vowel Shift. Through the worldwide influence of the British Empire, English spread around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries. Through newspapers, books, the telegraph, the telephone, phonograph records, radio, satellite television, broadcasters (such as the BBC) and the Internet, as well as the emergence of the United States as a global superpower, Modern English has become the international language of business, science, communication, sports, aviation, and diplomacy.[159]
Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c.1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English poet and author. Widely seen as the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales.
↑ Spellings of this name most common in modern texts are "Ethelred" and "Æthelred" (or "Aethelred"), the latter being closer to the original Old English form Æþelræd.
↑ Those who self-identified as English ethnic group
The population of the United Kingdom was estimated at 67,596,281 in 2022. It is the 21st most populated country in the world and has a population density of 279 people per square kilometre, with England having significantly greater density than Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Almost a third of the population lives in south east England, which is predominantly urban and suburban, with 8,866,180 people in the capital city, London, whose population density was 5,640 inhabitants per square kilometre (14,600/sq mi) in 2022.
Demographics of Wales include population, place of birth, age, ethnicity, religion, and number of marriages in Wales.
Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to, or descent from England, English culture, the English people or the English language, such as in the term Anglosphere. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to people of British descent in Anglo-America, the Anglophone Caribbean, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. It is used in Canada to differentiate between Francophone Canadians, located mainly in Quebec but found across Canada, and Anglophone Canadians, also located across Canada, including in Quebec. It is also used in the United States to distinguish the Hispanic and Latino population from the non-Hispanic white majority.
Anglo-Celtic Australians is an ancestral grouping of Australians whose ancestors originate wholly or partially in the British Isles - predominantly in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as the Isle of Man and Channel Islands.
European Americans are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes both people who descend from the first European settlers in the area of the present-day United States and people who descend from more recent European arrivals. Since the 17th century, European Americans have been the largest panethnic group in what is now the United States.
British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom. It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
The Welsh are an ethnic group and nation native to Wales who share a common ancestry, history and culture. Wales is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. The majority of people living in Wales are British citizens.
The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.
The Cornish people or Cornish are an ethnic group native to, or associated with Cornwall and a recognised national minority in the United Kingdom, which can trace its roots to the ancient Britons who inhabited Great Britain from somewhere between the 11th and 7th centuries BC and inhabited Britain at the time of the Roman conquest. Many in Cornwall today continue to assert a distinct identity separate from or in addition to English or British identities. Cornish identity has also been adopted by some migrants into Cornwall, as well as by emigrant and descendant communities from Cornwall, the latter sometimes referred to as the Cornish diaspora. Although not included as a tick-box option in the UK census, the numbers of those writing in a Cornish ethnic and national identity are officially recognised and recorded.
The United Kingdom is an ethnically diverse society. The largest ethnic group in the United Kingdom is White British, followed by Asian British. Ethnicity in the United Kingdom is formally recorded at the national level through a census. The 2011 United Kingdom census recorded a reduced share of White British people in the United Kingdom from the previous 2001 United Kingdom census. Factors that are contributing to the growth of minority populations are varied in nature, including differing birth rates and Immigration.
The historical immigration to Great Britain concerns the movement of people, cultural and ethnic groups to the British Isles before Irish independence in 1922. Immigration after Irish independence is dealt with by the article Immigration to the United Kingdom since Irish independence.
Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Australian. Australian law does not provide for a racial or ethnic component of nationality, instead relying on citizenship as a legal status, though the Constitutional framers considered the Commonwealth to be "a home for Australians and the British race alone", as well as a "Christian Commonwealth". Since the postwar period, Australia has pursued an official policy of multiculturalism and has the world's eighth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 30 percent of the population in 2019.
The British diaspora consists of people of English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Cornish, Manx and Channel Islands ancestral descent who live outside of the United Kingdom and its Crown Dependencies.
The English diaspora consists of English people and their descendants who emigrated from England. The diaspora is concentrated in the English-speaking world in countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, South Africa, and to a lesser extent, Zimbabwe, India, Zambia and continental Europe.
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons and considerable proportions of English people. It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.
The Gaels are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languages comprising Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic.
The settlement of Great Britain by diverse Germanic peoples led to the development of a new Anglo-Saxon cultural identity and shared Germanic language, Old English, which was most closely related to Old Frisian on the other side of the North Sea. The first Germanic speakers to settle permanently are likely to have been soldiers recruited by the Roman administration, possibly already in the fourth century or earlier. In the early fifth century, after the end of Roman rule in Britain and the breakdown of the Roman economy, larger numbers arrived and their impact upon local culture and politics increased.
In the demography of the United States, some people self-identify their ancestral origin or descent as "American", rather than the more common officially recognized racial and ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the American people. The majority of these respondents are visibly white and do not identify with their ancestral European ethnic origins. The latter response is attributed to a multitude of generational distance from ancestral lineages, and these tend be Anglo-Americans of English, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, Scottish or other British ancestries, as demographers have observed that those ancestries tend to be recently undercounted in U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey ancestry self-reporting estimates.
According to some scholars, a national identity of the English as the people or ethnic group dominant in England can be traced to the Anglo-Saxon period.
The Scottish people or Scots are an ethnic group and nation native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged in the early Middle Ages from an amalgamation of two Celtic peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century. In the following two centuries, Celtic-speaking Cumbrians of Strathclyde and Germanic-speaking Angles of Northumbria became part of Scotland. In the High Middle Ages, during the 12th-century Davidian Revolution, small numbers of Norman nobles migrated to the Lowlands. In the 13th century, the Norse-Gaels of the Western Isles became part of Scotland, followed by the Norse of the Northern Isles in the 15th century.
References
Citations
↑ "Ethnicity and National Identity in England and Wales". www.ons.gov.uk. Office for National Statistics. 11 December 2012. Archived from the original on 21 January 2022. Retrieved 21 February 2022. The 2011 England and Wales census reports that in England and Wales 32.4 million people associated themselves with an English identity alone and 37.6 million identified themselves with an English identity either on its own or combined with other identities, being 57.7% and 67.1% respectively of the population of England and Wales.
↑ Census 2011: Census in brief(PDF). Pretoria: Statistics South Africa. 2012. p.26. ISBN978-0-621-41388-5. Archived(PDF) from the original on 13 May 2015. The number of people who described themselves as white in terms of population group and specified their first language as English in South Africa's 2011 Census was 1,603,575. The total white population with a first language specified was 4,461,409 and the total population was 51,770,560.
1 2 Martiniano, R., Caffell, A., Holst, M. et al. "Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons". Nat Commun 7, 10326 (2016). doi:10.1038/ncomms10326 Martiniano, Rui; Caffell, Anwen; Holst, Malin; Hunter-Mann, Kurt; Montgomery, Janet; Müldner, Gundula; McLaughlin, Russell L.; Teasdale, Matthew D.; Van Rheenen, Wouter; Veldink, Jan H.; Van Den Berg, L. H.; Hardiman, Orla; Carroll, Maureen; Roskams, Steve; Oxley, John; Morgan, Colleen; Thomas, Mark G.; Barnes, Ian; McDonnell, Christine; Collins, Matthew J.; Bradley, Daniel G. (19 January 2016). "Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons". Nature Communications. 7 (1): 10326. Bibcode:2016NatCo...710326M. doi:10.1038/ncomms10326. PMC4735653. PMID26783717.
↑ Michael E. Weale, Deborah A. Weiss, Rolf F. Jager, Neil Bradman, Mark G. Thomas, Y "Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration", Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2002, pp. 1008–1021, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a004160Archived 21 February 2022 at the Wayback Machine
↑ Hills, C. (2003) Origins of the English Duckworth, London. ISBN0-7156-3191-8, p. 67
↑ Higham, Nicholas J., and Martin J. Ryan. The Anglo-Saxon World. Yale University Press, 2013. pp. 7–19
↑ "Chambers – Search Chambers". Archived from the original on 11 May 2020. Retrieved 7 February 2022. the citizens or inhabitants of, or people born in, England, considered as a group
↑ "National Identity and Community in England" (2006) Institute of Governance Briefing No. 7. Archived 15 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine
↑ "78 per cent of Bangladeshis said they were British, while only 5 per cent said they were English, Scottish or Welsh", and the largest percentage of non-whites to identify as English were the people who described their ethnicity as "Mixed" (37%).'Identity', National Statistics, 21 February 2006
↑ Ross P. Byrne, Rui Martiniano, Lara M. Cassidy, Matthew Carrigan, Garrett Hellenthal, Orla Hardiman, Daniel G. Bradley, Russell McLaughlin: "Insular Celtic population structure and genomic footprints of migration" (2018)
↑ Margaryan, A., Lawson, D.J., Sikora, M. et al. "Population genomics of the Viking world". Nature 585, 390–396 (2020) See Supplementary Note 11 in particular
↑ Wise, Gildas the (1899). "The Ruin of Britain". Tertullian.org. pp.4–252. Archived from the original on 22 September 2017. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
↑ celtpnArchived 6 December 2007 at the Wayback Machine However the names of some towns, cities, rivers etc. do have Brittonic or pre-Brittonic origins, becoming more frequent towards the west of Britain.
↑ Stefan Burmeister, Archaeology and Migration (2000): " ... immigration in the nucleus of the Anglo-Saxon settlement does not seem aptly described in terms of the 'elite-dominance model.' To all appearances, the settlement was carried out by small, agriculture-oriented kinship groups. This process corresponds more closely to a classic settler model. The absence of early evidence of a socially demarcated elite underscores the supposition that such an elite did not play a substantial role. Rich burials such as are well known from Denmark have no counterparts in England until the 6th century. At best, the elite-dominance model might apply in the peripheral areas of the settlement territory, where an immigration predominantly comprised of men and the existence of hybrid cultural forms might support it."
↑ Toby F. Martin, The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England, Boydell and Brewer Press (2015), pp. 174–178
↑ Catherine Hills, "The Anglo-Saxon Migration: An Archaeological Case Study of Disruption," in Migrations and Disruptions, ed. Brenda J. Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda, pp. 45–48
↑ Upward, Christopher; Davidson, George (8 December 2024). The History of English Spelling. England (published 2011). pp.70–74.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ Fisher, Michael Herbert (2006), Counterflows to Colonialism: Indian Traveller and Settler in Britain 1600–1857, Orient Blackswan, pp.111–119, 129–130, 140, 154–156, 160–168, 172, 181, ISBN978-81-7824-154-8
↑ Reynolds Farley, 'The New Census Question about Ancestry: What Did It Tell Us?', Demography, Vol. 28, No. 3 (August 1991), pp. 414, 421.
↑ Stanley Lieberson and Lawrence Santi, 'The Use of Nativity Data to Estimate Ethnic Characteristics and Patterns', Social Science Research, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1985), pp. 44–46.
↑ Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters, 'Ethnic Groups in Flux: The Changing Ethnic Responses of American Whites', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 487, No. 79 (September 1986), pp. 82–86.
↑ Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 36.
↑ Chui, Tina (April 2008). Canada's Ethnocultural Mosaic, 2006 Census(PDF). Statistics Canada. p.7. ISBN978-0-662-48324-3. Archived from the original(PDF) on 25 March 2009. the presence of the Canadian example has led to an increase in Canadian being reported and has had an impact on the counts of other groups, especially for French, English, Irish and Scottish. People who previously reported these origins in the census had the tendency to now report Canadian.
↑ See the pages linked from "Life Events". Church of England. Archived from the original on 22 November 2010. Retrieved 31 October 2018..
↑ Bowler, Peter J. (2001). Reconciling science and religion: the debate in early-twentieth-century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.194..
↑ "Facts and Stats". Church of England. Archived from the original on 27 September 2017. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
↑ Wolfgang Vierick (1964), Der English Dialect Survey und der Linguistic Survey of Scotland – Arbeitsmethoden und bisherige Ergebnisse, Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 31, 333–335 in Shorrocks, Graham (1999). A Grammar of the Dialect of the Bolton Area, Part 1. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. p.58. ISBN3-631-33066-9.
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![Map showing phonological variation within England of the vowel in bath, grass, and dance:
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'a' [a]
'aa' [ae:]
'ah' [a:]
anomalies Local pronunciations of bath in England.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Local_pronunciations_of_bath_in_England.jpg/220px-Local_pronunciations_of_bath_in_England.jpg)
